As Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich languishes in limbo in Moscow, his biographer Dominic Midgley reveals just how close he is to the Russian President.

When Russia’s then president Boris Yeltsin made the head of the country’s secret police his prime minister in August 1999, he was keen to ensure that the new man did not surround himself with ministers who might cause trouble for him.

And so he asked one of his most trusted associates, a softly spoken, bearded man in his early 30s, to vet all the PM’s cabinet appointments.

Yeltsin’s man duly commandeered an office on the third floor of Presidential Administration Building No 1, part of the walled-off 80-acre site in central Moscow known as the Kremlin, and interviewed the candidates one by one.

The bearded interrogator was the billionaire oilman Roman Abramovich and the prime minister concerned was former head of the FSB – successor to the KGB – Vladimir Putin. Ever since that day, the two men have operated hand in glove to their great mutual advantage.

Putin, 65, went on to become president and now, in the first year of his fourth term, is reputed to be Russia’s wealthiest man.

Abramovich, meanwhile, is the 13th richest person in Britain with a fortune of £9.3billion, a property portfolio including a £125million house on London’s smartest street, a flotilla of no fewer than seven superyachts – among them the £300million Eclipse – and a Boeing 767 as his private jet.

Oh, and there is the little matter of a high-flying Premier League football club called Chelsea on which he has lavished no less than £2billion in the past decade alone.

The foundation of this great wealth was an oil company called Sibneft that the 51-year-old acquired in partnership with another “biznisman” called Boris Berezovsky under the rigged privatisations of Russian state-owned mineral assets in the mid-90s which created a charmed circle of billionaires who became known as the oligarchs.

No surprise then that when Putin needed someone to mastermind the creation of a political party to support him as he geared up for the presidential election of 2000 following Yeltsin’s retirement, Abramovich was the individual he turned to.

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The younger man proceeded to put together from scratch a new party called Unity, which went on to win 23 per cent of the vote, just one per cent less than the communists who were then still riding high.

Putin himself coasted to victory shortly afterwards after making the crowd-pleasing decision to re-invade Chechnya following a series of terrorist outrages attributed to Chechen operatives.

It wasn’t long before the newly elected president was rounding on the oligarchs whom he accused of meddling in politics, dodging their taxes and making sweetheart deals with corrupt officials.

Within months Berezovsky – who was attacking Putin via his TV station ORT – and another media oligarch, Vladimir Gusinsky, had been hounded into exile and the richest of them all, Mikhail Khodorkovsky had been arrested and jailed.

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Abramovic's luxury mega yacht, Eclipse

It is said that one of Khodorkovsky’s miscalculations was to go into his first meeting with Putin as president wearing a polo neck rather than a jacket and tie and to then swing his feet on to the head of state’s desk, lean back in his chair, clasp his hands behind his neck and ask, “So Vlod, how are we going to run Russia together?”

It is inconceivable that Abramovich would betray such hubris. Unlike many of his fellow oligarchs, he never forgot that the president owned the jails and when Putin says “Jump!” Abramovich is the sort of man who would say “How high?” He even agreed to become governor of Chukotka, a godforsaken province in Russia’s far east just 60 miles across the Bering Strait from the US state of Alaska. In the days of the Soviet Union, Chukotk’’s proximity to Alaska meant that it was seen as strategically important. Russians were lured east with offers of three times their Moscow salaries to build roads and run hospitals and power stations. But after the communist system imploded everything went to rack and ruin.

Abramovich told one visitor: “Up here it’s reindeer for breakfast, reindeer for lunch and reindeer for dinner. The first course is reindeer, the second course is reindeer, and it’s reindeer for dessert. It’s funny but it’s true.”

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Roman Abramovich's £125million Kensington home

He duly set about revitalising the local infrastructure reputedly spending hundreds of millions on overhauling energy systems and public services. Despite this level of brown-nosing, Abramovich clearly still felt insecure. In 2003, he purchased what one Moscow-based businessman called “the cheapest insurance policy in history”: Chelsea Football Club.

At a stroke he became a household name in the UK and has earned the devotion of thousands of Blues fans for splashing out millions on top players such as Didier Drogba, Eden Hazard and Álvaro Morata.

As a result, if the Russian government moved against him they could be assured it would create headlines around the world and Downing Street would be all the more inclined to grant him political asylum.

By now Abramovich was free of the taint of any association with Berezovsky, having bought his 50 per cent share of Sibneft from him for a bargain basement £1billion in 2001.

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Abramovich never forgot that the president owned the jails

When I interviewed Berezovsky at his Mayfair office in 2004 he said: “Abramovich told me that if I didn’t sell, Putin will destroy the company.” Asked if he would sue, he replied: “No, I think now it’s useless.”

But seven years later he changed his mind and launched a High Court action alleging blackmail, breach of trust and breach of contract and sought over £3billion in damages.

After the most expensive private prosecution in British legal history, the judge threw out Berezovsky’s suit and awarded costs to the defendant. A year later, Berezovsky allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself.

By now Abramovich had sold Sibneft, accepting a £9.75billion offer from the state-run energy conglomerate Gazprom in 2005. As the American-born Russia investor William Browder once told me: “The richer you are, the more vulnerable you are. When six guys own 60 per cent of the assets of a country, ultimately they aren’t going to get to keep it.

“Abramovich’s great epiphany was to realise that and sell everything he could possibly get out of. It’s better to have $10billion in cash than $20billion in assets that are vulnerable to confiscation.”

The Times reported in 2008 that court papers showed that Abramovich had admitted paying billions of dollars for political favours and protection in the course of securing his share of the country’s mineral wealth.

A related allegation named Putin himself. In 2016, the respected BBC programme Panorama reported that the oligarch had given Putin a £25million yacht.

Given all this background, it is not surprising that Abramovich’s name appears in a list of people believed to be benefiting from the Putin presidency published by the US Congress at the end of January.

More surprising, perhaps, is that it has taken this long for the British authorities to act by apparently refusing to renew his visa.

• Dominic Midgley is co-author of Abramovich, The Billionaire From Nowhere

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Billionaire Roman must explain his wealth

Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich will have to provide evidence about the sources of his vast wealth to be allowed back into the UK under a tough new visa scheme, write David Maddox and Macer Hall.

The revelation has come after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson hinted that there could be a crackdown on prominent Russians with close ties to President Vladimir Putin being allowed into the UK.

The Russian billionaire missed his team’s victory in the FA Cup Final over Manchester United at Wembley because his Tier 1 investor visa had run out and he was unable to re-enter the country. But Downing Street has revealed that he has been caught up in tough new visa requirements introduced in 2015 to force the super rich to show that their money is legal and not from criminal sources.

The same rules mean that all 700 of the super-rich Russians currently entitled to live in the UK as well as others who use the 40-month investor visa are being looked at to see if they meet the new requirements.

The review does not affect Mr Abramovich directly because his visa ran out while he was outside the UK.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said: "Work is under way in terms of reviewing Tier 1 investor visas. In 2014-15 we took action to tighten up this route, including the introduction of new powers to refuse applications where there are reasonable grounds to believe funds have been obtained unlawfully. As a result applications reduced by 84 per cent.

"We are taking another look at how the route operates and are undertaking further checks on investors who came to the UK through this route before the reforms were introduced."

The new measures were brought in to tackle potential criminal activity and money laundering.

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President Trump has issued a list of Russian individuals and companies to face sanctions

Meanwhile, Mr Johnson last night hinted at further measures to crack down on prominent Russians in Britain with links to the Kremlin following the revelation that Mr Abramovich has not been issued with a new UK visa.

The Foreign Secretary, visiting Argentina yesterday, refused to comment on the news that the multibillionaire is unclear about his application for a new entrepreneurial visa being granted.

But Mr Johnson signalled that the Government was studying other measures to target associates of President Putin as a result of the diplomatic freeze following the Salisbury nerve agent poisoning. "I think it's very difficult for me to comment on individual visa issues it would be totally wrong of me to do so," said the Foreign Secretary.

"There is a broader question about what the UK can do to crack down on people close to Putin who may have illicit or ill-gotten wealth and as you know we have a statute that allows us to use unexplained wealth orders against them, but we live under the rule of law so whatever happens must be done in accordance with the rules and the law," he added.

Mr Johnson said tougher sanctions on Russia imposed by US President Donald Trump appeared to be having some effect. "The truth is actually that I think the effect of some of those sanctions particularly on some individuals has been very marked and I've noted that, but we have our own systems and our own approach and we have to do it in accordance with the law and accordance with the evidence," he said.